Child Labour: A Henious Crime Still Under-Practice

Child Labour: Fifty two kids rescued from Kapurthala farms in three years, many more to go.

Kapurthala & Bihar cops carry out a raid at Sial village.

With the rescue of yet another kid in Sial village on Monday night, the potato farms of Kapurthala have now been flagged as a hotbed of the interstate child trafficking nexus. The kid was the 14th child labour rescued from the notorious potato farm belt of Kapurthala in six months.

Before this, Thirty-eight children had been rescued from potato fields in Jalandhar’s Pholriwal village in December 2020. So far, Fifty two cases of rescue of child labourers (including from other states) employed in potato farms in the region have been reported.

Also read: The Heinous Crime On Hills: Rishikesh Diary

Child Labour At Sial Village

Owners of the farm at Sial village will be booked by Friday. We’re looking into the reports of other kids’ presence at the farm. Lal Vishwas Bains, Kapurthala SDM

While all these cases came to the fore with the intervention of NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan, one of the key complaints of the activists has been the reluctance of the administration to file an FIR against the farm owners. So far, only one farm owner has been booked or arrested despite repeated complaints to the police by the NGO.

In the Sidhwa Dona case, wherein 13 child labourers were rescued on April 6, an FIR was lodged against owners Major Singh and Resham Singh on April 30, 2022, twenty-five days after the incident. The owners were subsequently arrested and are currently out on bail.

Meanwhile, an FIR is yet to be lodged against the owner (or agents) of the Sial village farm from where a twelve year old Sitamarhi-based boy was rescued. The NGO is also demanding raids to ensure the rescue of fifteen more child labourers.

The declaration of these children as bonded labours (which makes them eligible for Rupees Thirty thousand compensation upon being released and up to Rupees Three lakh on the conviction of their employers) is another key demand of the activists.

SSP Navneet Singh Bains said, “Child labour is certainly a major concern for us and we are looking into the case. Proceedings will also be initiated to find the other 15 children as per the information received by the rescued kid.”